What happens when an unstoppable force (building everything in Electron because hardware is cheap) meets an immovable object (oh no hardware is expensive now)?
You joke, but I remember seeing a talk by Wunderlist CTO who has pretty much that. Also polyglot company and microservices in random languages. Can't find the talk now, but https://www.infoq.com/news/2014/11/gotober-wunderlist-micros... mentions 60 services at least.
I know, but the density of the data is much less in human case.
IOW, humans still learn more effectively with less information, because there are innate mechanisms which process this data continuously and extract new meanings from the same data. This is part of both intelligence and consciousness.
> I know, but the density of the data is much less in human case.
Is that really the case? How much data is it for 4k video, high bitrate auditory, spacial mapping, internal and external nervous system, emotions, and a dataset to correlate all of these in time?
Every RAM producer is stopping their consumer grade RAM production to provide ECC-RAM and VRAM now. Micron discontinued and closed down Crucial brand as a whole.
So, getting systems with higher RAM capacity is getting harder (from laptops to smartphones). So, for a couple of years, we need to stop using Electron so much and use what we have efficiently.
Data centers, esp. AI hyperscalers do not care about efficiency for now, because they can suffocate consumer-grade part of the hardware marketplace and get anything and everything they want. When their bubble pops, or the whole capacity ends, they need to learn to be efficient, too.
For reference, a well-optimized cluster runs at ~90% efficiency even though they have thousands of users. AI hyperscalers are not there. Maybe 60% efficient, at most. They waste a lot of resources to keep their momentum.
AMD's RYZEN already supports it. ASUStor's latest generation of NAS devices come with AMD x86_64 processors and ECC RAM as a standard, but ECC RAM in SODIMM format was not cheap, even when the RAM was cheap, either.
As someone trying to spec out a Ryzen workstation right now I can tell you it's actually harder because Ryzen (unlike EPIC) uses UDIMM ECC, not RDIMM ECC.
It's a niche that very few companies wanted to service before AI ram madness. Now the only vendor I can find is v-color:
I understood that support for ECC ram also depended on the motherboard but not sure. When selecting Ryzens, I only recall seeing many disclaimers for RAM support. Not sure to the causes though.
Why is that so unbelievable? TypeScript isn't JavaScript, and while they have the same runtime, compiled TypeScript often don't look like how you'd solve the same problem in vanilla JS, where you'd leverage the dynamic typing rather than trying to work around it.
The TS code looks very different from the JS code (which obviously is the point), but given that, not hard to imagine they have different runtime characteristics, especially for people who don't understand the inside and outs of JavaScript itself, and have only learned TypeScript.
One thing to consider, is that with JavaScript you put it in a .js file, point a HTML page at it, and that's it.
TypeScript uses a ton more than that, which would impact the amount of energy usage too, not to mention everything running the package registries and what not. Not sure if this is why the difference is bigger, as I haven't read the paper myself :)
But if you do, please do share what you find out about their methodology.
This image comes from running the different versions of the benchmark games programs. Some of the difference between languages may actually be just algorithmic differences, and also those programs are in general not representative of most of the software that runs.
That, and also because rust compiler is a very good guardrail & feedback mechanism for AI. I made 3 little tools that I use for myself without knowing how to write a single rust line myself.
I can see that a reality but I am more comfortable using Golang as the language compared to rust given its fast compile times and I have found it to be much more easier to create no-dependices/fewer-dependencies project plus even though I wouldn't consider myself a master in golang, maybe mediocre, I feel much easier playing with golang than rust.
The resource consumption b/w rust and golang would be pretty minimal to figure out actually for most use cases imho.
Markets only "figure things out" in a petri dish economy where:
1) There are no barriers to entry for competitors (e.g. protectionist tariffs, equal access to capital for everyone)
2) There are perfect substitutes available, so transitioning to a competitor is seamless and free (e.g. no requirement to store data in Country X, no vendor lock-in, no security compliance)
3) The industry is not a "natural monopoly" when only a handful of vendors can operate due to capital investment and national/global distribution required (see power utilities, telecoms, petrochemicals)
4) Profitability attracts competitors (won't happen because of #3), but heavy competition prevents abnormal profits from accumulating to a single player (happens because of #1, #2 and #3)
When markets don't figure things out, as is the case around the world, you get a tangled mess of market failures, government intervention and lobbying to neuter proposed interventions.
Markets are never perfect but over the course of history they are a pretty good mechanism to solve these type of problems. Not sure why we think taxing hyperscalers differently is the answer. Government usually does worse than the market when it comes to sorting it out.
My argument is not that market is perfect but that the alternatives are probably far worse, like a new tax on a specific group of companies.
The course of history, from borders to leadership choices and technological advances like seafaring has been determined to a much greater extent by organized religion and state-sanctioned warfare than it has by the open and free operation of markets.
If you have a consistent example of those solving market supply and demand pricing I am all ears. I read what you said but has little to do with my statement. Over the course of history one of the best mechanisms to solve imbalance is supply and demand has been the market and its ability to eventually set prices correctly. It’s not perfect and it’s not always the best solution but it’s pretty good for these types of problems.
I am all ears for your examples though but I don’t think borders, leadership changes or advances are “this type of problem”
We see that market is very irrational now and it can stay irrational for long enough to destroy everything we know in tech.
By the time market figures things out, you may no longer have services, and hardware that you use daily. When such amounts of stupid money are pumped into a single industry, even if all AI companies went out of business tomorrow, it's going to take years for things to go back to normal.
FWIW, I'm not advocating taxes, as I think that won't really do anything. I don't know what the solution is either.
Sounds like hyperbole. Yes the world is connected yes we are seeing shortages, yes the market is imperfect and it lags but this is how things get fixed. Prices are sorted out, manufacturers make bets on long term capacity. Some will be losers, some will be winners.
My guess is that many of the current people saying "technology is over and no one will afford their own computer" might have been born after the previous shortages, so it's in reality their first shortage and they have no memories (nor interest reading about) the previous ones, that all eventually washed over, even if at those points there were also people claiming that "No one will have their own SSD in the future, because prices will always be super expensive for consumers from now on".
That's my hypothesis I spent a whole of 30 seconds thinking about anyways.
This is a different kind of shortage though. Previous ones were cyclical and caused by supply/demand mismatches or natural disasters. This one is structural. The manufacturers are actively choosing to prioritize AI because the margins are dramatically higher, and AI market has virtually unlimited money right now.
> eventually washed over
Eventually is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Several years of constrained supply have real consequences for people and businesses. Hardware manufacturers are saying most of their capacity is already sold out to AI customers through 2026, and possibly even through 2027 and 2028, with the rest of the markets getting what's left over. This is a fundamentally different market dynamic.
How is that different from today? The scale might be different, but it's quite literally a "supply/demand mismatch" right now.
I don't think what we're seeing today can be described as "structural", at least because it's way too short to make such proclamations today, if it ossifies, then yeah maybe I'd agree with you, it's become structural.
> Several years of constrained supply have real consequences for people and businesses
Indeed, but lets see if it'll go as far as being "several years", the prices already stopped increasing, and supply still isn't planned to be expanded, if either of those changes you might have a point, but as of today it seems like an exaggeration.
The "scale might be different" matters quite a lot in this case. We're not just talking about demand slightly outpacing supply and resulting in prices going up 10%. We're talking about large parts of our societies and economies no longer having reliable access to technology that we now depend on for normal operation.
We wouldn't allow any amount of investor money to buy out essential utilities and then exploit their natural monopolies to charge the public 10x as much for access to water or electricity.
We wouldn't allow any amount of investor money to buy out all the companies that maintain our roads or rail networks and then charge 10x the established prices for maintaining that infrastructure.
We wouldn't allow any amount of investor money to buy out all the phone networks and then deny people access to communication because they didn't pay some exorbitant protection fee.
No-one thinks regulation of these markets and interference with these kinds of corporate transactions is a crazy idea. Why do so many people here apparently think we should let the funny money funded AI giants distort the entire global tech supply chain in the hope that their silly valuations won't come crashing down for a bit longer?
We can't afford to wait "several years" to see whether the invisible hand will fix the problem. The markets have already allowed this situation to develop over a period of several years. The damage is too severe and it's happening right now and it's getting worse. Governments need to start swinging the regulatory axe now.
Market is fixing it. Memory makers prioritized HBM and enterprise NAND, some, like Crucial, went out of consumer business entirely.
At the same time, the rational market is behaving rationally - they're not increasing production because they're fearing AI bubble could burst, leaving them with oversupply and expensive factories.
The market, apart from AI market, is behaving exactly as it's designed and as it should. But it doesn't mean outcome is good for everyone.
Why not? The point of regulation is to fix things when market forces haven't been sufficient. You keep talking about winners and losers but it's unclear to me who you think is actually winning in this situation.
and what market forces haven’t been sufficient here. Demand went up, price has gone up. Price has been fairly stable since the initial run up. It’s unclear to me why you think who the winners or losers matters. My position is it’s incredibly difficult to regulate short term supply and demand. You will always introduce unintended consequence. Regulation in my opinion works best where there are external costs that are hard to measure. This is not one of them.
Market forces have not been sufficient because the funny money moving around in the AI sector is starting to significantly damage other parts of the economy. I'm not sure how I can say this any more clearly.
If the AI sector wants to take a big risk that either pays off or it doesn't then that's one thing. If the danger is contained and the people taking the risks are the only ones who will suffer if things don't work out then that's their choice. The important point is that the danger in this case is not contained. It's not just the AI sector being affected now. It's not just the people choosing to take the risk in the hope of a big profit who are being harmed.
I don't think it's realistic any longer to treat this as some sort of short term supply-and-demand problem with luxury products. It's been building up for several years already. We're seeing public statements from some of the big companies involved that already run through 2026 and beyond that imply the supply chain situation continuing to worsen for everyone else. And the components in question are now necessary for a lot of normal operations and day-to-day life.
If we just wait and see for another 2-3 years as some are suggesting then in the meantime real businesses who were operating responsibly and doing nothing wrong will be failing to grow as they should, putting up prices for their customers, letting staff go, or even failing completely. Governments will be redirecting tax revenues to basic IT infrastructure instead of public services. People who just wanted to buy a normal device for their own personal use won't be able to afford one or maybe to find one at all and their quality of life will fall.
I can see no reason why we should allow these harmful outcomes just because some already rich VCs and some AI tech bros are playing games at the scale of the global economy to try to sustain the unrealistic valuations of the big tech companies for their own benefit. It's increasingly unlikely to work anyway and it's a realistic possibility that the bubble will burst this year so trying to contain the fallout from that as much as possible instead of allowing the bubble to inflate even further is not a bad idea either.
> ...and it can stay irrational for long enough to destroy everything we know in tech.
Nah. For decades software engineers have been more expensive than the cost of buying the extra hardware needed for vastly inefficient software. There are orders of magnitude of inefficiency there. So there's a ton of slack in the world's software that can be taken up by software engineers while hardware is scarce, pushing back the date where there will really be a problem probably by decades more.
Of course software engineers will see a problem though, because they'll have to learn to to write efficient software again.
ie. "Great, but now make it work with less RAM" will be a thing again, instead of "It needs more RAM so order some as it's cheaper than your time to fix the code".
What we're seeing is the natural conclusion of VC distortion in a market. There is so much money being pumped into AI speculatively now that it's hurting normal and sustainable businesses in other parts of the economy.
The solution might have to be mandatory rationing of some kind to avoid a situation where only a handful of AI giants are able to buy essential components. We can't just throw the rest of the economy under a bus to support the AI bubble for a few more months.
I'm working with a business right now that would like to buy some new servers for sensible, boring business reasons. It is having trouble because the prices from their normal suppliers are now extremely high - if the components are even available at all. This business has nothing to do with AI or Big Tech and yet it's at risk of being unable to continue normal operations in much the same way that a business would be affected if the phone networks were all switched off or the water supply to its office was cut. We regulate those industries because their continued reasonable operation is essential to make sure everyone else can continue to operate reasonably as well.
I'm seeing the same thing. I was consulting a group of people in my city that wanted to digitize massive load of old VHS tapes. No AI, no crazy tech, just standard, boring storage+network infrastructure.
I'm looking at the procurement sheet that I made for them a year ago. Half of the items are no longer available, while the other half became so expensive that we'd probably build 10 of such labs with these costs a year ago.
I'm also looking at my home NAS right now - I pray not even a plastic clip breaks inside, because I'd have to shut it down.
While these are still likely the first things that you'd think of being affected, I'm sure the effects are rippling through essentially every industry that utilizes these components in their supply chain. Which is probably - every industry nowadays?
I wish this comment can be on the absolute top of this page. This really is one of my frustrations with the AI bubble.
Fwiw, the days of creating an good ol' reliable hosting provider/Vps provider are over. I looked extensively into it one time out of curiosity but this would be one of the worst times in history to do that.
We would be sort of stuck with the options that we have right now and more and more shops in Lowend are even shutting down or raising prices with the sheer ram crisis and even HDD and storage crisis now.
A provider in LET had a post which said, "what should we providers do to deal with the ram shortage/ram prices"
These providers gave competition/had different unique features too to have chosen them but they were also incredibly price sensitive and the AI bubble blew the sensitivity by raising the prices almost 5 times or more. This would impact real businesses.
Thank you for creating this comment. I hope more people can read this. I genuinely just want this bubble to burst asap so that we can see a sense of rationality back within the market/the market functioning as expected without the immense irrationality/unpredictability of future.
another point is this, from my hosting provider idea, I shut it down. Why? because it literally makes 0 sense to start now, its postponed indefinitely untill the bubble bursts/ram prices are decreased.
How many other projects might be going through something similar. Gck1's comment next to mine also gives an example of a project whose value of cost increased 10 times.
How many of such projects would simply be unable to be built because of the ram inflation can't be underestimated imo.
and forget people who wish to game and many other things too. Basic comodities in the previous year or two feel like luxury now. All because of AI. It's insane.
I think that’s a massive stretch. What we are seeing is a new frontier in tech that nobody knows where it will land yet. Hyperscalers see a future where if they don’t build now that they might be left behind.
Absolutely VC money is flowing around but I think it’s unclear where the cards fall yet.
Not sure what you would regulate here. I hate the tripe that America and China are at war but I do think it’s not a great decision to stop the current work the west is doing as China is pushing full steam ahead.
It's not much of a stretch at all. There are already normal businesses that can't buy normal equipment at normal prices (or can't buy it at all) right now because the supply chain has been redirected to a small number of businesses that can only afford to drain the pipeline like that because of the astronomical scale of speculative investment they've received. Similarly there already individuals who can't buy normal equipment for their own use.
This situation is harmful both economically and for basic quality of life. It is rational - and probably now necessary - for governments to intervene to counter the market distortion and ensure the continued availability of normal products to everyone else.
I am fully aware that the West regulating here would potentially undermine the VC investment model that these big tech firms are relying on. I have no problem with this. Business entities are legal fictions that we allow to exist for the benefit of real people. If the behaviour of those entities is harmful to real people - and I don't think anyone can credibly claim otherwise in this case - then it's time to change the rules they operate under.
> it can stay irrational for long enough to destroy everything we know in tech
What does this even mean? I know people on the internet sometimes exaggerate, but I cannot even begin to find a more charitable meaning with this, what exactly will be "destroyed" in "tech" because of prices going up for a year or two?
Here's an easy experiment to conduct: look around the room at your home and count all the devices that have a CPU, RAM, SSD or HDD.
Then take a look at your bank statement to see what are the services you pay for monthly that also require the same hardware.
Now, imagine that these devices or services can no longer procure RAM, SSD or HDD. There's no more available supply for these components, because this is what's happening.
Would you still be able to have these devices if they all broke tomorrow? What about your hypothetical Backblaze subscription? Would you still be able to have an off-site backup?
> imagine that these devices or services can no longer procure RAM, SSD or HDD
Why would I imagine something so far out from what will realistically happen?
Again, a lot of doom and gloom over very unrealistic scenarios. Where are you even getting this from, YouTube channels?
Of course if there is no RAM or flash-storage at all available, eventually hardware will be unfeasible. But when we've experienced these sort of things before, it eventually restores to "normal" prices, and there absolutely nothing pointing to what we're experiencing now to get even worse, if anything it's already stabilized.
Yeah, which shows that Valve don't think "these devices or services can no longer procure RAM, SSD or HDD" is actually what'll happen in reality, because then they'd have to cancel the hardware fully. Instead, they're delaying it.
I jumped into the discussion because of this hyperbole:
> to destroy everything we know in tech
Valve (temporarily) increasing the pricing of yet-to-launch hardware wasn't where I thought we'd land at with my first comment, I somehow also have the feeling that that wasn't what GP had in mind either,.
“Parroting” is not very constructive language but I will respond.
How would you propose solving it? My opinion is that government cannot solve the problem better than the market. That’s not to say the market is ideal or perfect but one of the better tools available. GPU prices might stay high for a number of years. I don’t think that is inherently bad. Constraints breed innovation and help guide market participants into the right direction.
I think folks often get hung up on the market thinking it’s a perfect tool or it will realign issues instantly. That’s not true. Demand is high, price catches up and eventually either that thesis behind the demand is correct and eventually supply increases or that thesis is proven wrong and demand collapses below original baseline.
Obviously that’s a simplified version of it above but I don’t know what folks like yourself are poking. How is a tax on hyperscalers effective? I suspect most folks repeat this idea because they are in the anti-AI camp. Should we tax EV manufacturers because they may be buying up battery supply? I don’t know if I want the government making those kind of decisions.
It (GPU prices getting out of hand) started when, 2012? What's constructive in saying "the market will correct itself" after 14 years of no sign of that happening?
I don't know what the solution is since I'm not an economist, but I also don't have to be a pilot to declare someone fucked up when I see a helicopter on a tree.
EVs are a very tangible thing that are on the road, compare that with crypto and NFT which is ??????
Can you use less inflammatory language and be more critical in your thought? Your point, if there is any, is drowned by your lack of command of constructive discussion.
Who are you to decide what is tangible and what is not? That’s my whole point. GPU prices are still not crazy on a $ / performance scale, especially if you do a rough chart of it over time. Certainly there are carve outs, the 5090 is still hard to get and charges $1k+ premium over msrp.
Deranged? My thesis is that many have tried different ways to solve supply and demand issues and usually on average the market solves it best. It’s not perfect, it’s not always the right tool but on average it’s pretty good.
If that’s deranged wow I might not need to be the one touching grass. Let’s backup, you’re the one saying I am parroting. I asked you how you would solve it. You ignored that and went further down some hole of prices being imbalanced since 2012 and not being a pilot and then jumping to crypto and nft.
None of that is constructive. That’s not what gaslighting is. You’re going off on strange tangents and have yet to provide a solution to the problem. I already said it, the market is not perfect but it’s pretty good at solving these types of problems. If you have a better way I would love to hear it. I don’t believe arbitrarily taxing specific industries is a solution because there are always second order effects that you cannot plan for. And also who gets to decide who can buy equipment or not.
I am not policing you. Just pointing out this is not in the spirit of constructive dialogue and you should work on it! I am generally tired of folks like yourself not adding anything while raging that others need to touch grass. I noticed that’s a common insult with folks like yourself.
Because this perfect version of capitalism you think exists, doesn't.
We live in a world with markets dominated by cartels of tech companies who don't play by the rules. Every other industry that impacts society in a negative way typically pays some sort of specialized tax to offset that, I don't know why these tech oligarchs shouldn't have too. It's wild how people just want to let them do whatever they want.
Everyone says we need to deregulate tech, and certain industries to get ahead of China.. Isn't it funny how their largely government controlled economy (to a degree) is annihilating the west on all fronts economically. We need far more regulation.
China will defeat the West solely because it regulates its billionaires, not the other way around like we have it in the West. And I hope so, the world is rooting for you China.
Way to put words in people mouths. Markets are imperfect but I do believe on average they are one of the better tools to solve supply and demand issues.
I don’t know who will come out winners but I do agree that China did well taking the playbook from Singapore and navigating their country through incredible amounts of growth. They are still facing depressing housing prices and deflation in other parts of the economy.
There are absolutely areas where markets breakdown, thinking problems where impacts are on longer horizons but for simple supply and demand like what we are seeing today, things will sort out in a couple years.
Reads a bit like the Paperclip Maximizer appearing way ahead of schedule? Implemented not as AI, but as emergent behavior in the ways of the financial class (that happens to be about AI, singularity and all that).
Like the purchase price + increased cost? The thing is that these parties are sitting on billions and billions of investor money, they don't care that hardware is 400x as expensive. Which companies like nvidia have capitalized on a few years ago, they were already able to price their hardware at a 400% markup compared to pre-crypto times, and shift their focus from consumer graphics chips to datacenter compute chips, causing their revenue to go up 6x (if my interpretation of [0] is correct)
"Hard drives already sold out for this year" - https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/20/ai_blamed_again_as_ha...
Time for an AI tax on the hyperscalers.